


you'll miss me when you're home/ it's for you dear, that i sing this song

by unenthusiasticcavalry



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Alcohol, Come Cry With Me, Dialogue Heavy, M/M, Wakes & Funerals, aftermath of death, major finale spoilers, talking to your dead friends trope
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-04
Updated: 2020-06-04
Packaged: 2021-03-03 21:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24531934
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unenthusiasticcavalry/pseuds/unenthusiasticcavalry
Summary: Well, this was his chance. This is what you do at funerals, right? You talk. You ‘say a few words’. You say what you never got to, or what you never would have had the balls to say to his face in the first place. The others could wait in the car for a little longer, Jacobi assured himself. He owed him this. He deserved a proper goodbye.
Relationships: Daniel Jacobi/Warren Kepler
Comments: 8
Kudos: 28





	you'll miss me when you're home/ it's for you dear, that i sing this song

**Author's Note:**

> WARNING. MAJOR FINALE SPOILERS FROM HERE ON IN.
> 
> just uploading some things i've written before and haven't shared. come cry with me about these two.

_ 2018 _

Jacobi stood alone over a simple headstone, whiskey in hand. The day was cool and grey. Not as cold as it had been for the past few months, and certainly not the coldest he had seen, but still much cooler and grayer than he would have liked it to be today. It was too cliche.

The nameplate, various photographs and command insignia lay neatly in a box in the hole in the ground. It was all they could think to do. He tried not to think about where the body actually was, not that he really knew. He had a few guesses, though, and the reality of those felt too suffocating to ever consider. It was better this way: a few memories, tucked quietly into a box. It was unorthodox enough of a burial that Jacobi thought it would have been to his liking, but it still felt right. 

Well, this was his chance. This is what you do at funerals, right? You talk. You ‘say a few words’. You say what you never got to, or what you never would have had the balls to say to his face in the first place. The others could wait in the car for a little longer, Jacobi assured himself. He owed him this. He deserved a proper goodbye. 

Even after he had convinced himself of that, though, it took him almost an entire minute to have a clue where he would begin. He debated just turning back around and getting in the car, but something stopped him, as melodramatic as he knew that sounded. He knew it was just his imagination, but he could almost swear that through the wind in the trees he could hear-

* * *

“Go on, now. I’m listening,” Kepler would have said. 

Jacobi nearly laughed. “Oh, so  _ now  _ you’re listening.”

Kepler would have laughed at that, to Jacobi’s surprise. “Yes. Better late than never.”

“God. You couldn’t even leave me to speak at your funeral without barging in, could you?” Jacobi could almost feel his presence, standing next to him, all stoic and charming at the same time. He didn’t dare look anywhere but the headstone, though, lest it break the illusion of company he had afforded himself.

“Don’t let me make you nervous, Mr. Jacobi.”

“It’s too late for that Colonel. I am thoroughly shaking in my boots.” 

“Aw, come on now. Don’t be like that.”

“I hate public speaking. You know that.”

“This could barely be considered ‘public’. You’re alone.”

Jacobi inhaled sharply to keep himself together. “No need to remind me.”

“Hm. You’re right. But in all honesty, Daniel, I’d like to hear you say your peace.”

“Why?”

“Why? Daniel, isn’t it obvious? A man wants to know how his partner will remember him. Is that such a crime?”

“I… I don’t know where to start, Warren.”

He could hear how Kepler would have smiled at that. Smug bastard. “Well, I’m here, despite the fact that I’m not. Take advantage of it. Talk to me,” he would have replied.

“Yeah, because we did the ‘talking’ thing really well.”

“We did. I thought so.” He would have glanced over at Jacobi, completely unreadable, as he waited for him to begin. “Well? You’re not getting any younger, Mr. Jacobi.”

“Okay, alright. Big speech time. Here we go.” Jacobi sighed and smiled sadly into his drink. “To start, you had great taste in booze.”

“Thank you. As do you.”

“When I can afford it.”

“Luckily, I could.”

“Yeah. That was the first thing I admired about you, you know? Great taste in booze.” He smiled as he took his first sip.

“The first thing I admired about you was that you fell for that.”

Jacobi looked at the headstone in surprise, both at the statement itself and the honesty of it. “You admired that I bought into the oldest cliche in the book?”

He would have chucked. “Yes. It was charming. _‘I was going to offer to buy you a drink.’_ Feared it might have been uninspired, but it seemed to do the trick.”

“You got me,” he said, raising his hands in mock surrender, “hook, line and sinker, Colonel.”

“Indeed.”

Jacobi smiled to himself, with a hint of embarrassment. “You know, I think shitty pickup lines aren’t the sort of thing you’re supposed to talk about at a funeral.”

“Then don’t think of this as a funeral, Jacobi, because I’ve quite liked how this has been going so far.”

“Is that an order?” he asked, with a bit of bite to his tone that he instantly regretted.

“No, it’s not. Not anymore, remember?”

He stared harder at the headstone. “Yes. I remember.”

“It was a suggestion. I’d hazard to call it a request, in fact. Honour it, would you?”

“Sure thing, Colonel. It’s not like you leave me much choice.”

“How so?”

“You think I could live with myself if I didn’t?”

“Fair point. Appreciate the honesty.”

“You didn’t always.”

“I did. I just didn’t show it.”

“Why not?”

“It felt unnecessary.”

“Bullshit.”

Kepler would have laughed again. “Really? Enlighten me.”

“No, you took my honesty for granted, when it counted. That’s how I finally managed to get one over on you.”

“Ah, yes. That one was…  _ quite _ the adventure. You surprised me that time, I have to say.”

Jacobi rubbed his temples. “You know, can we forget I brought that up? It’s not the stuff that I’d like to remember about you, and I-”

“If you say so, Mr. Jacobi. I’m not actually here, and so you are in complete control of the direction of this conversation.”

“Should be a change of pace for you.”

“It would have been,” he would have said, poker face completely intact. “It very well would have been.”

“There. That’s another thing that I admired about you. It was frustrating as all hell sometimes, but you were always in control. You were always making the call that needed to be made.”

“I could have told you that.”

“Well, I’m the one making the speech.”

“Watch yourself.”

Jacobi nearly winced. “Please. Don’t do that.”

“Do  _ what _ , Mr. Jacobi? Be specific.”

“Just don’t. Don’t tell me what to do, please. Not here. Not now. I can’t remember you like that, Warren, I just can’t.”

“Well, I don’t know that that is up to me now." He would have breathed deeply and lowered his voice. "And if I might offer some insight, I would say that it’s going to be difficult to remember me selectively. I would even say it’ll be practically impossible, so maybe don’t waste your time holding yourself to it.”

He scoffed. “What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“It means that… well,  _ I’ve _ always found that when most people die, acquaintances or even friends, it’s easy to remember our favourite parts of them, because you don’t really know the uglier parts. We all have them. I knew yours, and you knew a few of mine. So, my working theory: the things we knew about each other? Those things put us in a unique position during the entirety of our… partnership. I can’t see that that would change now that I’m gone. I’d say it just leaves you to solve our puzzle alone.”

“But I don’t want to. Couldn’t you see that? I didn’t want you to leave me alone. I don’t want to have to work this out on my own.” 

“It didn’t matter what you thought you wanted.”

“Why not?”

“The bigger picture was at stake, Daniel. The whole world was at stake. Don’t be a child.”

“Don’t talk about the  _ bigger picture _ . You sound like  _ them _ . And the only person that ever treated me like a child up there was  _ you _ .”

“I did what had to be done.”

Jacobi almost lost his temper, almost gave into the urge to chuck the glass at the headstone. He took another sip instead, hands shaking as he wiped away a tear quickly. “I know. I know. I just wish it didn’t have to hurt so damn much, Colonel. I wish  _ we _ didn’t hurt, you know? We were always just _ pain _ . Even when it was good, it wasn’t good because we were all healthy and happy and shit. It was either good because we were too tired to hurt each other, or because we liked what the hurt of the day felt like. And so, now that you’re gone, I thought maybe, just maybe, that I fucking deserved to not hurt anymore. But… it just hurts so much worse. It hurts so bad just to think about the fact that you’re not actually here, to be staring at your fucking headstone and know that I’m the last one left. It hurts like Alana hurt, only worse because she’s not here with me to tell me it's going to be okay. I am literally the last man standing. I am alone. And so I reserve the right to wish that I wasn’t, even if you say you did the right thing in the end.”

“I’m sorry to say I think that it’ll hurt for a long time,” Kepler would have replied after a moment's consideration.

“Thanks, that helps a lot.”

“You liked it when I was honest.”

“Don’t use that against me.”

“Not everything is a weapon to be used, Mr. Jacobi.”

“Bullshit. That’s exactly what we were. That is exactly how we worked. We were weapons.”

Kepler would have sighed, and whether it was in frustration of begrudging defeat, Jacobi could never quite tell. “Well, I guess that’s what made us remarkable in my mind. Despite being _weapons_ , as you put it, you and I managed to mean something to each other.”

“Each other? So you’ll admit it then? It wasn’t just a one way street?”

“I had admitted it many times, in my own way. You just weren’t listening.”

“Blame it on me. Typical,” he said, beginning to ramp up for a spat out of habit.

“You’ve gotten off track, Daniel. I don’t know that you really want to get into a shouting match with me here, of all places. Besides, I’ll still win that argument, without even being here.”

“I know,” he laughed. “You always did.”

“You liked it, Mr. Jacobi.”

“No, I didn’t,”

“Yes. You did,” Kepler would have said 

“Okay, sure. I liked it,” he replied. “There you go, there’s the third thing: you talked  _ reallyyyy _ pretty. I admired that. Like, not just prettier than me, because it’s pretty easy to talk better than me. Most people do. Obviously, because this speech attempt has been a trainwreck, but… yeah. You had a way with words. I consider that to be a gift and a virtue.”

“Thank you kindly.”

“You, know... “ Jacobi began, “No, never mind.”

“What?”

“No, it’s stupid and I’m not saying it.”

“Jacobi.”

“No, it’s not-”

“Daniel.”

He could never help from freezing when Kepler called him by his first name unexpectedly. “Okay. Fine. I always used to wonder… if you would say anything about me, when my time came. I guess I had assumed… well, I thought that I  _ knew _ that my time would come first, and I… well, whatever you would have to say would almost certainly be a lot more genuine and, well, pretty, than what my family would want to say.”

Kepler would have smiled softly. “I see. I’ll admit, I don’t envy you your position right now, Daniel. For what it would be worth, I wouldn’t want to speak at your funeral for the precise reason that it would be  _ your _ funeral. I never wanted to see that day.”

“You sure hid that well, then. You never seemed scared that I would die. Hell, you never seemed scared that  _ you _ would die.”

“What is there to be scared of? You fight against it until you can’t anymore, and then, when it finally catches up to you…”

“Then it’s just game over.”

“Exactly.”

“Okay. Fourth thing I admired about you, then: you were fearless,” he said. “According to yourself, at least. I could count on one hand the times I saw you scared, and almost all of those times you were scared for  _ me _ . You could stare the devil down without flinching.”

“Hey, don’t be too hard on yourself, Mr. Jacobi. You could stare Cutter down without flinching too,” he would have joked.

“Hey. Not funny.”

“You sure? I thought it was pretty good.”

Jacobi couldn’t help but chuckle despite himself, especially when Kepler had baited him like that. “Sure. Sure, that was pretty good. Another thing I admired: you made people laugh. I mean, Lovelace didn't think so, but she was wrong. When you could get the stick out of your ass for a second, you were funny.”

“Backhanded, but I’ll certainly take it.”

“Yeah, you will. It’s my speech.”

“Don’t get cocky on me now.”

“Just stating the facts, Colonel.”

Kepler would have pretended not to like that. Jacobi knew that he would have. They would have gone quiet. The comfortable silence they would have found themselves in could have lasted forever. It used to. They used to be able to just sit in silence together, like they didn’t need anything but each other’s company. Jacobi tried to cling to the idea that this was just another one of those silences, but the longer it lasted the more he became aware that it was only silent because he was standing alone. There wasn’t a  _ together  _ in this silence. There wouldn’t be anymore. Only Daniel Jacobi by himself. 

“I’m going to miss you,” was all Daniel could think to say. “Despite it all, despite you being, well,  _ you _ , I’m still standing here just thinking about how I’m going to miss you so damn much.”

That hung in the air for a second.

“That sounds to me like the end of a speech, Daniel,” was all Kepler would have said.

“Not quite.” He closed his eyes, took another sip of the whiskey, and then a deep breath. He opened them again and stared straight at the headstone, his head held high and feeling ready to say goodbye. “Colonel Warren Kepler, you were remarkable in every sense of that word. You were a great colleague, friend, and… you were a hell of a good kisser. I admired you for a lot of things, but really, I admired that you were someone to be missed. In all that we saw together, I learned that being someone worth missing isn’t easy. You have to make enough of an impact on someone else to get there. And somehow, in between all your crazy stories and your stupid power plays, you managed to make enough of an impact on my life for me to stand here and know for a fact that I am going to miss you. So, thank you for our time together. Rest easy, Colonel.”

“Tenfour, Mister Jacobi. We’ll see each other again, but don’t you hurry, darlin’,” was all that Kepler wished he could have said.

“I won’t, Warren. Goodbye for now.”

* * *

Jacobi poured the rest of his whiskey gently onto the earth, and walked away into the brisk afternoon.

  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
